Movie review: Luck

(courtesy IMP Awards)

Whether you are of a superstitious bent or right, we live in a world which seems to believe that much of what happens to us in life is beyond our control.

It’s hard to say if this is the result of some pretty determined blame-shifting or hardcore laziness or simply having one (major) thing less to feel guilty for – considerate and understanding if you take into account how good we are being guilty about just about everything or that simply those of us who had religious upbringings? – but the fact is that we seem more than happy, regardless of the philosophy or belief system, to wash our hands of the way our lives play out.

So, let’s just say free will and self determination are simply sweet little delusions borne of a thinker’s idle afternoon, who is it exactly that’s making life go well … or not?

Well, if you are to believe Luck, newly released by Skydance Media, whether we experience good or bad luck comes down purely to whether we hit a cloud of the good stuff or the bad stuff floating randomly through the world, all of which is produced in the Land of Luck, overseen by a Jane Fonda-voiced dragon called Babe who is exuberantly lucky and who employs a rather draconian divide between the two halves of the random concept that is luck.

Random because despite a land which has some reasonably strict ideas governing it – though these are realised a tad inconsistently which is one of the film’s flaws; its worldbuilding only goes so far and no further which is a pity because the overall concept is solidly beguiling – what you encounter in the real world where our earnestly doe-eyes protagonist Samantha “Sam” Greenfield (Eva Noblezada) is as unlucky as they come, is purely down to what is spat out according to no particular rhyme or reason by a gilded machine with a prettily steampunk look and vibe called, wait for it, the Randomiser.

This machine, which apparently can change the course of a person’s life on a whim, is overseen by leprechauns who are headed by the Captain voiced by Whoopi Goldberg, a highly-strung overseer who runs a tight ship and who keeps a sharp eye on the Lucky Pennies which keep the cats who enter our world such as Scottish black cat with a penchant for paninis, Bob (Simon Pegg) – who by the way seems to be there to combat the idea that black cats are unlucky are, well, he’s not, a progressive idea underdone by narrative necessity or inclination later on – in a ball of good luck when they’re on a mission.

Quite what this mission is isn’t clear, and nor is the idea why they need portable good luck when the world is supposed to have a heady mix of both – clearly it’s more of a crap sandwich that a BLT which might speak to the need for some recalibration in the Land of Luck right Babe? – but the Lucky Pennies matter, especially if like Sam you encounter, you need a change in your to-date bad fortunes.

When Sam and Bob encounter each other over a panini one night after Sam’s had a hard first day at work – this is after she’s aged out of the orphanage she’s called home all her life, a sanctuary of sorts where the lovely little Hazel (Adelynn Spoon) and Sam’s favourite kid in the world still lives in search of the Forever Family Sam never got – and Sam finds Bob’s dropped Lucky Penny, which changes her life, and hopefully Hazel’s, the Land of Luck and the land of humanity meet and all hell broke loose.

Well, it attempts too, anyway.

In truth, charming as this smartly-animated film is with vibrantly sweet characters who are universally voiced by people who nail emotion and personality to a thoroughly delightful tee, the plot often feels like it’s simply going from place A to place B to C and so forth, with no real sense that any of it really matters very much.

It does matter, of course, because we’re told it is in a exposition-heavy plot which never really gets up a head of steam, despite some hilarious touches such as the hazmat rabbits (a play on the nickname for the suits which comes alive with bunnies who look perpetually and amusingly uncertain of life) and a near-balletic transportation system which is beautifully impressive to watch, but it never really feels like we’re building to something though, naturally, we are.

We have to be since selfless, kindhearted Sam, who never found a family to call her own, needs to change Hazel’s lack of adoptive good fortune which rides, apparently on a dragon who thinks, at one point, that all good luck is a good thing and that we should never have any bad luck.

It’s kind of hard to argue with that kind of twistedly bucolic logic, but Luck does anyway, trying for the Inside Out gambit that good luck only matters because bad luck is there and without the latter, many of the things that make our lives good wouldn’t be there.

In other words, no one likes bad luck, assuming you believe in that quasi-religious concept anyway which kind of stomps all over the fact that we are steerers of our own destiny, but it can give you all kinds of inadvertent good things which in Sam’s case means a found family, the exact composition of which arrives Up-style at the end of the film.

Nicely redemptive though the idea is, especially when you consider how many good and kind creatures in the land of bad luck which is stuck hell-like underneath the shiny prettiness of the good luck portion of the land, is never really sticks, evidence of messaging that is well-intentioned but which never really makes a lot of sense.

Still, despite inadequacies when it comes to worldbuilding, premise and narrative cohesiveness and reason for being, and of course the entire idea that we rise and fall on the whims of beings who live in a world that sees human as some kind of weird contagion (hello Monsters Inc.; yes there are a lot of Pixar-ish references which could be explained by the presence of Pixar’s onetime head, John Lasseter), Luck is light, bright and somewhat emotively delightful, full to the brim with sparky characters, fun-filled visuals and an element of whimsical silliness who give this inoffensively enjoyable film a kind heart big enough to overcome its many other deficiencies, leaving you with a happy glow of happiness and belonging and a fervent wish that our destiny is solely in our hands, flawed though they may often be.

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